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Tom Izzo: If Michigan State protests social injustice, we will stand united

Michigan State players are embracing the pressure that comes with the expectations of a potential NCAA title. Listen to the team speak Oct. 11, 2017 at media day at the Breslin Center.

Tom Izzo said if his Michigan State players plan to protest social injustice, it will be done as a team - coaches, managers and all

Michigan State head basketball coach Tom Izzo speaks during a press conference as part of MSU men's basketball media day on Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2017, at the Breslin Center in East Lansing.(Photo: Nick King/Lansing State Journal)

But if his Michigan State basketball team will do anything this season to bring light to any injustices, the Hall of Fame head coach said the Spartans will do it as a unified unit.

“It's kind of up to all of us to do something about it,” Izzo said Wednesday at MSU media day. “But we need to be looking at real solutions rather than tearing each other apart. I don't have all the answers. My players didn't have all the answers. You don't have all the answers.

“But I can promise you one thing: If our team does anything, ever, it's going to be our team. It's going to be all of us – our coaches, our managers. It's going to be everybody, because that's what teams do. I can also promise you that it will be something that will be thought out and we'll look at it as realistically as we can look at it.”

Izzo said he and his staff have talked with the MSU players about social issues of the moment a lot more in the off-season. He cited racial equality and “the protests,” yet there have been plenty of polarizing topics that have bled from society into sports in recent months.

There was no talk of the Spartans doing anything such as kneeling or locking arms during the national anthem. To Izzo, that is not as important as keeping an open dialogue with players who are impacted by the issues.

They are causes that run deep through Izzo’s own family. His wife Lupe’s father, Efrain Marinez, was a civil rights proponent in Lansing who believed in peaceful protest, was friends with activist Cesar Chavez and remained active in fighting for the rights of farm workers until his death in 2010.

“These issues affect the team. These issues affect our society. They affect all of us,” Izzo said. “So there are problems in society. The issues involving race, equality is important to me for a lot of reasons. One, my own household. Two, my own team here.

“One of the things I love about sports, it's a true brotherhood. I mean, you think about it, we got guys from Flint and Okemos, Alabama and Ohio, we have guys from Dallas and Detroit, from The Bahamas and Grand Rapids. As a team, we spend a lot of time discussing these issues and allowing everyone the opportunity to explain things from their unique and their own perspective.”

Izzo believes the point and message of the protests, such as NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem, has been lost in the delivery. The biggest goal, he said, is “to try to make our country better, to try to give us a country that has more equality instead of the social injustices that I think we have.”

And as much as telling his team about his feelings was important, Izzo emphasized that it’s just as much about listening to their concerns.

“I heard something that said, ‘Are we about the protests or about the progress?’ Hopefully we're going to be about the progress,” Izzo said. “So it's a difficult thing, you know, when you're talking to 17- to 22-year-olds. I just thought I'd address to you the best thing I can address to you, that we're talking and we're trying. We're trying to make the world a better place. In some areas the world needs to become a better place.”